Death Comes to Kurland Hall

Lloyd’s overly complicated third Regency mystery (after 2014’s Death Comes to London) finds amateur sleuths Lucy Harrington and Maj. Robert Kurland returning from London to Kurland St. Mary, where Lucy’s father, the local rector, is about to preside over the wedding of a friend of Lucy’s. Rector Harrington’s surprise announcement that he plans to marry widow Maria Chingford, a blackmailer who sells secrets to the London newspapers, sets Lucy devising ways to prevent the match. When Mrs. Chingford’s body is found at the bottom of a staircase, almost everyone, including Lucy herself, is a suspect. Then Emily Fairfax, the stepmother of Robert’s new estate manager, is found dead near a letter confessing that she killed Mrs. Chingford. As Lucy and Robert, unconvinced, probe the two linked deaths, they must clarify their feelings for each other as well as a web of other subterfuges. Though implausibilities mar the plotting, the protagonists’ romantic power struggles are as appealing as ever. Agent: Deirdre Knight, Knight Agency. (Dec.)